Risky business: Protecting nature, protecting wealth?

Abstract

Finance is a precondition for many of the activities that harm ecosystems, but how to address this underlying driver of biodiversity loss remains a topic of debate. This paper reviews the Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), a corporate-led effort that aims to identify how changes to biodiversity may create financial risks for companies and investors. This approach is also promoted as a strategy for managing the impact of business on biodiversity, with the assumption that risk disclosure will more effectively price biodiversity-harming activities. We assess the potential of the TNFD toward this end, and invite conservation scientists, practitioners, and policymakers to engage critically with its theory of change. We find that the relationship between disclosing biodiversity risk and redirecting finance away from environmental degradation is tenuous and unproven, making this mechanism insufficient for addressing the impact of the financial sector on nature. We question the embrace of another industry-led mechanism that implies that a lack of information is the greatest barrier to stopping biodiversity loss. Further, there are risks that this financial sector approach to biodiversity will reinforce the highly unequal concentration of power and wealth, which is itself inimical to transformative change, as called for by the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.